Ptolemy then if Archimedes doesn’t grab your fancy.
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Opinions about geometry.
Yes, that’d exactly what Plato had.
Even though it is true that Aristotles arguably greatest value is as a catalogue of philosophers who’d otherwise have been forgotten he or Plato had no role in the transmission of the great Greek actual thinkers, like Euclid and Pythagoras.
And Archimedes did not get the compass and ruler method from Aristotle.
Also that method has nothing to do with Aristotles initiation of physics, his discovery of proportional volume displacement.
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But, Euclid was a Platonist.
He had a whole treatise on pure Platonist science vs utilitarian science.
And Archimedes’ geometry had much more of an impact on physics, in being the foundation for optics, than did volume displacement. His true genius was abstract mathematical.
And yes the straightedge and compass was an invention and promulgation of the Platonic school.
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Pyhagoras was a half crazy cult that Plato whipped into academic discipline.
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The separation of science from everything else: mystic reality, morality, engineering, cosmology, everything. This is only Platonic. It is this rarification that made science the powerful machine it is today.
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Plato did to contribute anything to geometry.
Yes he catalogued, and yes he brought thinkers together. But he himself produced nothing in the way of mathematics. Also Platonists did not invent the compass and ruler method, they popularized it.
As for discipline, when I read Plato, I see it is riddled with false steps. I don’t see how it is not, at root, undisciplined. Even though it is very disciplined in following through that method. Whereas… well I can’t even fathom how you could call Pythagoras undisciplined - he actually created geometry, introducing rigorous deductive proof. Pretty much the essence of intellectual discipline. He also applied it to the physical world in his discovery of tonal harmonies through mathematical approach to the lengths of strings. These are real things that still are at the foundation of our day to day world, because well, they are real. Plato had no concept of rigorous proof and none of his ideas have bearing on reality in remotely the same direct way as Pythagoras’ ideas.
And countering another fallacy; I am not dismissing the influence of Archimedes’ mathematics on later physics when I say he initiated physics with his discovery of proportional volume displacement. Clearly this discovery is a direct precursor to Newtons law of proportional force displacement.
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“The separation of science from everything else: mystic reality, morality, engineering, cosmology, everything. This is only Platonic. It is this rarification that made science the powerful machine it is today.”
Absolute nonsense. Please just actually read him. He rather does his utmost to try to press together science and mystical reality and morality and cosmology.
This idiotic mess had to be disentangled before science could become a project.
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But yes, he inspired people with his idea that Geometry relates to The Good. He psychologized it, made it appealing, hyped it, thus brought lot of people together in an academic tradition, among whom happend to be a handful of geniuses. He (rather, Socrates) was basically a social genius, a very cool guy with an interest in intellectual matters.
The very essence of mysticism is what Plato did to the geometric solids his name got attached to; he connected them to ‘the elements’.
If you want to study discipline in geometrical engineering, study the geometry of the Parthenon, built before Socrates was born.
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I don’t see how you can create a school, dictate its doctrines (severe ones), produce from it all of the founders of modern science, and that not in itself, without a single scientific treatise written, be perhaps the most important scientific work, by impact, in history. His opinions were not some dinner discussion, they were a set of hard limits, the vessicle within these scientists were formed.
Because Plato adopted them. Period. It was already a moribund cult, stahnated. It had stagnated because of a bunch of mystical limitations that jad nothing to do with the math. Plato, because he believed in pure revelation, not by accident, stripped the pure math from the mumbo jumbo.
I was not suggesting that you were dismissing it. I was pointing out that the Platonic, mathematical side of Archimedes was his true weight. Same with Newton, by the way. The other stuff they considered hobbies, but for a reason.
Physicists salivate at fluxions and Archimedean geometry, not fancy demonstrations of simple mechanics.
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He pretends to do this, because this is expected of philosophers. If you look close, he just says “do the math and everything else will be revealed through it.” Which amounts to throwing everythkng else overboard.
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Well we disagree. Science is science, popularizing it is popularizing it. The popularizing of science is not the actual science. I actually agree with Socrates on that.
No, it was fundamental to the Athenian architecture that still stands and amidst which Socrates grew up.
Again, there simply is no such thing as Platonic mathematics.
And no one salivates at fluxions anymore though. And you may now think of proportional displacement as ‘simple mechanics’ as it has become intuition. But no one intuited it before, no one had thought that the universe was consistent in that way. Now it’s still the basis of particle physics; even the uncertainty principle is a matter of proportionality, where certainty itself becomes a displaced quantity. In terms of particle physics we’re still stuck at the gluon, which obeys the principle very rigorously, the displacement of one type of gluon by another being the ground to atomic strong force.
Anyway you I’ll keep insisting that Plato had something to do with mathematics and science, I will keep saying he was a glorious salon-host. We will not resolve this, but we’ve made our points.
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They salivate at diferential calculus, which is fluxions by another name.
Also there was no salon. There was an institute. Not a place that attracted scientists: a place that made them. And made them on the basis of a philosophical approach that can already be seen in the dialogues.
He didn’t popularize modern science. He founded it.
Aboyt Pyhtagoras, you are simply not aware of the history.
And yes, you can extrapolate all sorts of principles from Newton’s laws and Archimedes’s displacement. But those extrapolations were not generated from them. They were generated from the hard math, and the reasoning underlying it.
That’s why both Archimedes and Newton bothered with them. As demonstrations.
Pleasure talking to you. Obviously your opinions on this are neither shallow nor frivolous.
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“I continue to see Plato as the slackening of the Greek will.” ←- this definitely seems the case when reading the pre-Socratics. But I would add that will and depth are not necessarily on the same course or path over time..
I have a strange time giving Wittgenstein a ton of philosophical credit or value. Sure there are one or two things I’ve read of his that I liked. “Light dawns gradually over the whole” I think is one. I am sure there are other good things he wrote that I have not read. But much of what I have read of him is just… wrong. Or rather it is right only within a narrow context that does not appreciate its own context or structural necessities. Maybe more on that later? But I like this idea of only speaking meaningfully in positive statements. A=A is strange, a basis for logic in mathematics perhaps. But you are right, and as Herman Hesse also said, “No man has ever been himself.”
It has been so long since I read Plato that I find it hard to recall much of it to mind. I liked his theory of Forms, this idea did lead me into I suppose you could call it a ‘greater metaphysical vantage’. Well not Forms per se but that was part of the climb up that mountain.
As for false syllogisms, yes I see Plato is indeed the master of that, through Socrates. Seriously, if you want to study false syllogisms then just read any Socratic dialogue. Not saying there aren’t any good ones that demonstrate, er, good thinking and proper philosophizing, but… meh. He was the ultimate troll, but yes as you mentioned elsewhere also very good at popularizing stuff. And that too is certainly needed.
Yes in terms of his method I entirely agree. I was always turned off by it, from what I can remember of my school days.
This is cool and I wish I knew more about it. Never got into Bacon, and the little of Descartes I did read in school was tedious and his irrational skepticisms annoyed me to no end. But what you say also makes sense, his deep questioning of the “I” of one’s own existence and verifying that. Maybe he was a needed or at least useful step along the existential trajectory.
Philosophies being not per se true, but fertile grounds… I like this approach. It seems to elevate truth above itself, '“true” becomes something more meaningful and richer, vaster, more… true.
ha, nice!
Yeah if anyone is the anti-syllogist it could be Nietzsche. Or maybe Deleuze (lol). Heidegger was great, I really did and still do enjoy reading him. Heidegger and Hegel are profoundly enjoyable to read. Nietzsche too of course, depending on the mood. I would say your metaphor here is a good one. Heidegger is always trying to peer behind things, being and dwelling, Dasein… Nietzsche is that atom bomb of absolute reality-pressure, no apologies and diving right the fuck into it without employing any metaphysical emergency brakes or distractions. Nietzsche may have thrown out that stuff but I give him credit for trying to transcend transcendence itself, which if you think about it is hilarious and it is no wonder he failed.
I like Heidegger’s more poetic approach to things, it is a nice balancing out from pure Nietzsche (Zarathustra notwithstanding). Heidegger definitey cracked a lot of puzzles open so we might glance inside, but never really developed a comprehensive theory. A lot of questions and answers here and there, a new attempt or at least refreshing attempt at method like you say as kind of balance between Socrates and Nietzsche, well not balance but yeah. It is funny how Nietzsche hated Socrates too. I forget what he called him… oh yeah , “ugly plebian” HAHA 
Anyway not sure if any of this is on point with the discussion you were having.. back to sexual capitalism then? lol.
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Descartes started it, really. For me it was a relief to read someone who had the same level of doubt. I think personally thats what philosophy is, the profoundest doubt.
Let’s go for it.
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What? It’s repressed homoerotic tension transplanted onto the antagonism of the figure of the Capitalist Jew. An excitig novella full of homosexual secret corners.
The long nose is a phallus.
What else did you want to know?
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You may be right about that. I have always taken a different approach, that while I integrate plenty of doubt into my own thinking it must be justified somehow, not a kind of default position. I see default doubting as just as problematic as default believing, which is not to say these do not have value in certain cases because they do. Take Kierkegaard’s leap of faith for example, we can and at times should believe something in order to tests it, to see what comes of it. Sometimes only radical belief can achieve this… perhaps along the route you bring up, there are other instances in which only radical doubt can also achieve the same kind of results via real-world testing.
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edit sorrryy…wrong place